What are the biggest barriers to deploying the cloud?

Yes, cloud computing has been one of the hottest technology trends in recent years, but it’s also been met with controversy. Many companies have yet to make the switch to cloud computing, and we wanted to know what our 500 IT professionals thought were the biggest barriers to deploying infrastructure in the cloud.

And can we really call “cloud computing” a trend? Analysts say that the addressable market for Infrastructure as a Service is estimated to be $1.8 billion. And this is part of a Global IT Market of $2.5 trillion. But barriers aside, cloud infrastructure has proven potential to drive companies to success via a re-optimization of resources and re-allocation of IT spend.

When most people hear the phrase “operating system in the cloud” they usually think of a really cool client-side, Web-based desktop like EyeOS or CloudMe or even Chromium OS. Perhaps that is the future of client operating systems, but when cloud infrastructure providers talk about operating systems, they are making reference to which OS your cloud infrastructure will run on. And, it’s not always limited to just one in many cases.

Operating systems in the cloud are very important because they are what your applications and infrastructure are built upon. Whether you’re using the cloud to deploy test & development environments, act as your data center or run your company’s business critical applications, the operating system plays a vital role in cloud infrastructure.

Most IT professionals are pretty passionate about what operating system they prefer. For instance, search for “Windows vs. Linux” on Google – over 109 million results have some sort of opinion on the topic. But, since actions speak louder than words, we wanted to determine which operating system was used more by the IT industry.

If you’re brand new to this series, let me catch you up to speed. At the beginning of the year, GoGrid gathered feedback from over 500 CTOs, developers and IT professionals relating to cloud computing and best practices. This week, we’re highlighting the results from the question “What type of security/compliance do you require in the cloud?”

You may have noticed, whenever there is a conversation about Infrastructure-as-a-Service, the security debate is sure to follow. We wanted to see what types of security the IT industry uses and which were the most important to maintaining compliance.

What Type of Security/Compliance Do You Require in the Cloud?

As seen in the chart above, private VLANs, network layer firewalls and DDoS mitigation are the most required form of security according to our respondents, followed closely by Virtual Private Networks.

Several weeks ago, we released the GoGrid Cloud Survey Report, which contained data from a survey we conducted at the beginning of the year. We polled over 500 CTOs, developers and IT professionals, and asked them to share their industry insights and specifics on how they used cloud technology.

Our first post in this series, “What is Cloud Computing and How Do You Use It?“, focused on what IT professionals believe cloud computing encompasses and what aspects they use in their work process. As the largest Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) pure play in the world, we were curious to see what percentage of the IT industry used cloud infrastructure currently and if there were plans to increase infrastructure usage throughout 2011.

We have taken the key findings of the survey and created several interesting charts and graphics. Because of the extensive nature of the survey, we will be releasing the findings in topical blog posts over the coming months, but you can download the full survey results data at any time by clicking here.

The results of our survey highlight two key findings:

1) Higher than expected use of Infrastructure-as-a-Service

We asked the industry if they were using cloud infrastructure and found that over 45% of our respondents use IaaS in some way, shape or form. This number was much higher than I anticipated. While many businesses use cloud technology, the primary use has been Software-as-a-Service (like e-mail or other hosted services). This data shows that there is a healthy understanding and adoption of cloud infrastructure services.

It’s important to remember that when we talk about Infrastructure services that we are talking about various appliances that make up ones infrastructure, namely, cloud servers, load balancers, cloud storage, firewalls, private networking, etc. While the primary adoption by corporations and enterprises does seem to be focused on cloud applications, many companies choose to create and launch these applications built on top of cloud infrastructure, the fundamental building blocks that are making the cloud so successful.

In January and February of 2011, GoGrid polled over 500 IT professionals, CTOs and developers and asked for their thoughts on cloud computing, how they currently use the cloud and where they think the industry is headed. The results of this survey shed new light on how the cloud stands in 2011 and what we can expect as we move towards 2012.

We have taken the key findings of the survey and created several interesting charts and graphics. Because of the extensive nature of the survey, we will be releasing the findings in topical blog posts over the coming months, but you can download the full survey results data at any time by clicking here.

With much speculation and debate about what cloud computing is, the first questions we asked the industry is what they believe cloud computing encompassed – Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (SaaS).

Question: When you think of “cloud”, what does it mean to you? What does the “cloud” encompass?

As seen in the responses to this question the majority of IT professionals are in agreement that all 3 services make up cloud computing, but emphasized Software as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service. More importantly, we wanted to know what percentage of the IT industry actually uses cloud technology for their business. Most people are familiar with SaaS (e.g., Gmail and SalesForce). But interestingly, IaaS seems to be almost on par with SaaS according to respondents. (more…) «GoGrid Cloud Survey Report – What is Cloud Computing and Do You Use It?»